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Praying with Scripture: Some thoughts

The Strange New World of the Bible
Praying with the Bible is about having a confidence in the Bible, a confidence that it is Scripture. It is about owning Paul’s words to Timothy:

All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness, so that the servant of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.
I Timothy 3:16-17

Achieving this requires both imagination and discipline. Neither of these are straightforward. Karl Barth has a brilliant way of seeing Scripture which both helps us understand what Scripture is, and can fire our imaginations. He speaks of The Strange New World Within the Bible. The following short extracts capture some sense of his article:

‘We are to attempt to find an answer to the question, What is there within the Bible? What sort of house is it to which the Bible is the door? What sort of country is spread before our eyes when we throw the Bible open? . . .

We can but feel that there is something behind these words and experiences. But what? . . .

We are aware of something like the tremors of an earthquake or like the ceaseless thundering of ocean waves against thin dikes; but what really is it that beats at the barrier and seeks entrance here? . . .

There is a river in the Bible that carries us away, once we have entrusted our destiny to it . . .

And the invitation to dare and to reach toward the highest, even though we do not deserve it, is the expression of grace in the Bible: the Bible unfolds to us as we are met, guided, drawn on, and made to grow by the grace of God.’

Imagination
The suggestion that the Bible might be the world from which we need to see our lives and the more obvious world around us, requires imagination. The demands of the Information Age in which we live, and the instant nature of everything in our consumer culture can damage our imaginations. Finding space, and a suitable way to reflect on Scripture, is vital if we are going to gain a biblical perspective on anything (and everything). How we find time to spend with Scripture and how we can explore our imagination to make Scripture our own, is a very personal thing. Something I like doing is listening to popular songs and attempting to redefine them by association with a biblical story, event or idea. For me Abba’s SOS captures some dialogue during the failing relationship between Yahweh and Israel. When I hear REM’s Everybody Hurts I think of Job’s friends who failed to understand his predicament. When I listen to Tainted Love by Soft Cell I cannot help but think of the story of Cain and Abel. Perhaps more controversially when I hear Kylie Minogue’s Can’t Get You Out of My Head, I think of Jesus hanging on the cross. But that’s just me. We all need to find our own way to inhabit the strange new world within the Bible.

Praying the Bible, and I am thinking essentially of the Psalms, requires imagination. We need to not just read them, but to use our imagination to consider who is saying the words. For example psalm 2 can come to life by spending some time imagining it as words spoken at David’s coronation. Who is speaking? A priest? David? God? There is no simple answer and it varies from verse to verse. The key is that this psalm takes on life for us. Then we can ask the question: What do these words mean in the light of Easter? What do the claims of this psalm mean? What cosmic perspective does it assume; in apparent stark contradiction to so many world events?

Discipline
This is an even more important foundation to praying Scripture. Our everyday experience of having all we want waiting on a shelf, in a supermarket or in an on-line catalogue, places a burden upon the Bible of immediate spiritual refreshment. Sometimes that can be our experience, but not always. The value and transformative work of Scripture is not a quick fix, rather it is an organic gradual process. This often means that we can tire of our regular ‘quiet times’ because we measure them with the wrong criteria. If we measure our feelings, after praying Scripture, against watching an action film, sitting by a swimming pool or going down the pub, we are making a false comparison. Bible reading and especially praying Scripture is not about entertainment, therapy, stress management or even ‘having a friend’. Although, there are passing moments when it can feel like, and be, any of these. Reading Scripture is about being fed and being changed; it is about perceiving who we are, who God is and the nature of reality; all from a strange new-world perspective.

There is no way of escaping the very fundamental need to decide upon a way to encounter Scripture regularly. There are no firm rules about how, when or even how often. The how can include any combination of reading, reciting, purposeful re-reading, listening to a CD, memorisation, taking notes, answering questions from notes or our imagination. The when can be first thing in the morning, last thing at night or lunchtime. The frequency might be once a day, seven times a day or once a week? All the permutations of place, time and frequency have their own advantages and disadvantages. The key is to do something. If it does not work then try something else.

Two exercises
1. Read psalm 13, then listen to Elton John’s Sad Songs. Pray psalm 13 for yourself, or someone you know, as appropriate.
2. Read psalm 149, then listen to Bob Marley’s Jamming. Pray psalm 149 with the intention of owning this attitude through the rest of the day.